J.P. Jackson

Excerpt from Daimonion, Book One of the Apocalypse:

 

Meditation
ALYX

Mom was a Healer and had abilities, like lighting candles with no matches when she thought I wasn’t watching, and I would swear it never rained on us when we went outside—for anything. We never had a need for Band-Aids in the house. As a kid, scraped knees only lasted until I got home to Mom. But special abilities must have skipped a generation, because anything I’d tried was never successful. Except for the last few meditations, those had finally proven fruitful after years of practice.

In the last two months, I had finally managed to create my safe place: a beautiful lush and temperate woodland forest glen. Not only did I believe I was physically there, but I could smell and hear the babbling creek, feel the moss between my fingers, and see the bright greens and mottled browns, which were too vibrant and alive to be anything but real.

And then there was the appearance of the Satyr, which had been unexpected to say the least. He was much taller than I, powerful and animalistic, covered from the waist down with tawny goat fur and jet-black hooves instead of feet. The bridge of his nose was flattened, his cheekbones were high and scruffy with whiskers, and his eyes glimmered violet. Massive curved horns grew out from the corners of his forehead and swooped back. The animal had been very friendly.

Maybe, just maybe, I could glean some help, a clue or a hint as to where I could find the handsome stranger, in a meditation. There were numerous spell books for finding lost items and making love potions, but after racking my brain all night long, I couldn’t remember any spells or incantations that would find an unknown person.

I could improvise, though.

Tiptoeing down the hall past Mom’s bedroom, I bypassed several floorboards that always creaked when anyone stepped on them. I made my way as silently as the old house would allow. It was entirely possible that Mom had heard everything, but it had been a couple of years since she bounced out of bed when I came home late. After all, I was twenty and an adult.

I closed the bedroom door, peeled off my clothes, and searched for the comfy baggy sweatpants I wore around the house. They were hiding in the corner of the room, near my bed.

Pulling on the worn-out fleecy garment, I noticed how thin and hairy my legs were. I wouldn’t have called them chicken legs, but I bet that Mr. Blue-eye-muscle-man had thick stocky legs.

The old sweats, which had holes in the knees and a rather revealing rip in the crotch,

felt comfortable once they were on. Many people who practiced magic did so skyclad. I just couldn’t get comfortable enough to do it, and without being comfortable, meditations always failed. With these on, as grungy and old as they were, I had a sense of home and comfort that enabled me to go further than the couple of times I had tried it naked.

But I was quite comfortable bare-chested and barefoot. I cleared out a sizeable area in front of the bed. Once the spot was ready, and the laundry hamper was stuffed full of discarded clothes from the floor, I stepped towards the dresser. In a couple of the oversized drawers, I had, over the years, accumulated a large amount of paraphernalia from Mom’s store. As I rummaged through the unsorted items, memories came flooding back while seeing specific objects. All of them good recollections, usually times spent with Mom in the shop. But there were certain items I was pretty sure would help me get what I was after, and it was those objects I was searching for.

In my head, I constructed a list of items for my improvised spell. I grabbed a lightblue candle for the meditation work, a minty-green candle for good luck, some charcoal, the little bronze cauldron, a piece of parchment, a silver marker, the wand, some incense, and some extra candles. That should do it…maybe. I honestly wasn’t sure.

I lit the incense, its smoke beginning an upside-down cascade towards the ceiling. The cardamom gave off a smoky, earthy aroma, calming me as the scent enveloped my bedroom and washed around my head. I lit each of the candles and thought intently of their purpose as the wicks caught the flame. Four candles were aligned with the compass points, the light-blue and minty-green ones in the middle of the space, just next to the cauldron. Then I set the charcoal to burn and placed that into the brass pot that sat in the very center of the work area. I waited for what seemed to be an eternity until the charcoal was red hot, and then I began.

Picking up the wand, which was an old gnarled piece of hemlock with Norse runes etched into the shaft, I pointed it towards the north candle. While chanting, I moved clockwise in a circular motion and passed each of the compass points that were lit up by candles until I came back to the northern one.

“I call upon you, gods of old, to come to my safe space and lend me a helping hand. I call upon you Guardians of the East, come to me with your gifts of intellect, knowledge, and wisdom, guided through the air.” A little gust of air made the eastern candle flame flicker and sway.

“I call upon you, Guardians of the South, come to me with your gifts of power, light, and burning energy, guided through fire.” The charcoal in the cauldron hissed.

“I call upon you, Guardians of the West, come to me with your gifts of emotion, dreams, and passion, guided by water, and I call upon you Guardians of the North, come to me with your gifts of fertility, growth, and grounding, guided by earth. I call to each of you, be with me, assist me, as I am your child, a child of magic.”

I placed the wand in the middle, near the cauldron with the red-hot charcoal. Sitting cross-legged in the circle, I reached for the piece of parchment and the silver marker. I held both items in my hands and closed my eyes. Visualizing Mr. Blue-eye-muscle-man, complete with the black trench coat that fitted him just a little too tightly and his scruffy bearded face, I recreated the scene from earlier that afternoon when he had appeared in the bookstore.

I took the marker and wrote on the paper: The handsome man who saw my mom at the store today: Help me find him.

I folded the paper in half, and then again, and one last time. I held it tight in my right hand and pictured walking down the street, bumping into this enigmatic stranger who I desperately wanted to find. I pictured myself working in the bookstore, turning around suddenly to be face-to-face with the unearthly eyes of the stranger. I pictured myself naked and held tight by those thick muscled arms, with my body pressing against his, enveloped in a quilted blanket.

Okay, that last thought maybe shouldn’t have crept in there.

I was done. I had visualized this to death, and was afraid of what else my mind would come up with, although I was pretty sure I already knew that it would have been wildly inappropriate.

I dropped the paper onto the hot coal in the cauldron, and as it started to turn black and burn away at the edges, I whispered softly, “Come to me.”

I sat back and closed my eyes again. The smell of the incense, still heavy and thick, and the twinkling light from the candles all around me made my head feel weighty.

Let me go to my safe place. 

 

 

Excerpt from Magic or Die:

Setup: James has been haunted by the ghost of his ex. In this scene, Annabelle, a 19-year-old Arcane Magical has convinced James and the rest of the students in her class that it’s in the ghost’s best interests to be freed. Once released, the entity should move on to the spirit world. Unfortunately, things don’t go according to plan.

From Magic Or Die:

“Okay, good, just stand there,” she said once I had positioned myself. “Isaiah and Chris, you stand there and there.” She pointed at two spots opposite each other. “And then Camila and Ning, here and here.” Annabelle walked over to a small pile of books and picked up a few volumes, then headed over to the last blank circle in the massive hex mark.

“This is kind of scary,” Ning said.

The others nodded.

“Okay, are we all ready?” Annabelle asked.

There were tentative nods all around, however I wasn’t seeing or feeling optimistic enthusiasm from anyone.

“James, when I point at you, I want you to call out to Cody, but you have to say it with importance and force. Got it?”

“Yup. Got it.”

“Here goes nothing,” she said as she tossed one of the books out in front of her. It abruptly stopped, floating briefly and then hung in one spot suspended in mid-air. Annabelle waved her hand over the tome. The cover flipped open and several pages rustled as she made her way to the correct incantation. It stopped on the desired page. Annabelle started reading.

“Here in the night,

Where spirits roam without light,

We call upon the ghost, and the one it calls a host.

Tethered and linked, cast together, indistinct,

Come to us, reveal your intentions,

Not just a shadow, no apprehension,

Just you, and us, an ascension.”

Annabelle’s voice lilted with the rhyme. She sounded otherworldly, and for the briefest of moments, I could have pictured her as a benign forest nymph, not the dark girl possessed by a demon horde. And then, she pointed at me.

Random old memories of Cody swarmed my head as my hands turned dead cold and clammy. In that moment, I regretted giving Annabelle the permission to do this. But it was too late now.

“James, now,” Annabelle whispered, but despite the breathy words, the urgency came through.

“Cody,” I yelled, as fear and betrayal clawed at me with sharp talons.

We waited as the air around us became heavy and still, but that didn’t last long. Annabelle’s dark mist wafted on the air currents, expanding gradually. Snaky white vapours writhed their way across the floor, winding into the middle of the circle where I stood. The space within the charmed circle filled up, leaving us knee deep in ashen-tinted fog. Cody’s corporeal body gradually formed, but this time, he was missing a good chunk of the skin from his face. Fingers had fallen off and one ear hung from a black sinew of flesh. It turned my stomach looking at him. He floated closer and put his lips a breath away from my earlobe.

I shivered uncontrollably.

“This is different. You called me? Do you want me? Have you ditched the other one, the one you cannot save? Look at me, touch me…like you used to.”

“No, Cody. It’s time. You don’t belong here,” I said. The hairs on the backs of my arms were standing straight up as Cody brushed up against my back.

“I belong with you.”

Annabelle recited the next verse in her spell book.

“Through the doorway,

Pass from this realm,

A new place awaits,

With Golden Oaks and White Elms,

The pasture of the goddess,

A place of peace, of love, of solace.”

The sigils in the center of the circle glowed an eerie yellow as the air took on a similar tinted haze, and the smell of sulphur became weighty and thick when Annabelle recited the Arcane invocation.

Cody’s face morphed from sexy tempter into a scowl of rage. “What are you doing?”

“What we should have done a long time ago,” Annabelle said. She slammed the text shut with a wave of her hand. The sound of the closing book made everyone jerk their heads to look at it. Black demon mist swirled in towards the book. Skeletal fingers formed from the fog and grasped it.

“What are you doing?” Annabelle said with a scowl. I had to assume she was talking to the bodiless hands that gripped the book.

Annabelle stepped forward and grabbed the book and tugged it, hard.

“Let go! This is not yours,” Annabelle hissed.

Without warning, another disembodied hand formed out of the dense black vapour and scratched the back of Annabelle’s hand. It left huge red welts and one long scratch that wept blood.

“Ow!” Annabelle pulled her hand back and cradled it, but as she let go, the demon claw released the book and let it drop. The book spun slightly and moved into the circle, obliterating one of the hex marks.

“No!” Annabelle screamed.

The rest of us standing in our circles were terrified. Isaiah made moves to leave the hangar.

“You can’t leave. Don’t! Stay where you are,” Annabelle commanded.

Demon voices screamed out from the mist behind Annabelle, and Cody hissed.

Everyone whipped to look at the book as its movement smeared more of the carefully written magical symbols.

Cody laughed. “You won’t be doing anything now.”

Cody began to dissolve back into smoke, as tails of his vapour edged its way out of the ritual space. The broken circle was his way out.

 

Excerpt from Summoned:

Setup: Dev Khandelwal has just purchased a summoning board and convinces his best friend Cameron Habersham to perform the ritual with him. Little do the two realize how their actions will begin a path into a supernatural realm they weren’t prepared for, or were expecting.

From Summoned:

“Honestly, I don’t get what you see in all this stuff.” Cam waved his hand through the air, a flippant gesture meant to dismiss Dev’s impressive occult collection.

Of course, Cam was referring to the contents of Dev’s room, crammed full of books, candles, incense burners, and trinkets on every flat space. The occult was Dev’s jam. Crystals, runes, tarot decks—you name it, Dev had it. The occult. He had read, studied, and practiced everything from card readings to spirit summoning. But despite his keen interest, admirable level of knowledge, and dedicated study, Dev hadn’t had a single otherworldly encounter or brush with psychic phenomenon.

That killed Dev.

“Shush. You be nice. Otherwise my demons will get you.” Dev chuckled, knowing full well Cam’s interest level focused more on his latest pair of shoes. Dev made a mental note to check for holes in the floorboards.

Dev, on the other hand, would have done anything to be a witch, sorcerer, or seer of the hidden. A pastime his Indian-born mother did not appreciate.

“Devid, why? This is all bad. You need to find a nice girl, get married, have children. I want to be a grandmother.” Dev pictured his mother’s face as her lips mouthed words. He would sit in a state of catatonia while she spouted off such sentiments. Like this morning, at breakfast.

He had come out years ago. But Dev would close his eyes and sigh as his mother continued to say things to him, clinging to a misguided hope perhaps his penchant for men was a passing phase. So far, that had not proven true, and even though Dev had stabs of guilt about his attraction to muscled, hairy-chested bearded guys, those wretched guilt pains didn’t stop him from fantasizing about burly men and on rare occasions, pursuing them, however shyly. And Dev’s mom had little good to say about Cam. Cam was also gay. Scruffy too, and even more of a furball than Dev, although both sported a hirsute body. Cam, by his own admission, was a bit of a quandary. Walking down the street no one would suspect Cam’s sexual preferences. Cam’s tankish stride, wide square shoulders, set closer to the pavement than the sky, plowed through most crowds like a stocky football player. His unruly hair made him look manlier, like Jason Momoa. But when Cam opened his mouth, and these were his words, not Dev’s, “Unicorns and rainbows just fly out, and honestly, if you can’t figure out I’m gay, then how dense are you, really?” That was an exact quote. Flamboyant from sun up to sun down, which Dev loved. He wished in some small way he could be as brave and carefree about his sexuality as Cam. That wasn’t the case, especially growing up in a first-generation-born Canadian household that still held true and fast to many an Indian custom, like the kalava he wore around his wrist. The red string bracelet was there to appease his mother and signify Dev’s adherence to Hinduism, but nothing could have been further from the truth.

Cam snapped Dev out of his mental wanderings. “Dev, the moment you actually manage to harness a demon and have it do your bidding, I’ll concede to wearing discount clothing.” Cam cocked an eyebrow and pursed his lips at Dev, who met his gaze. They both smirked. In no world, anywhere, would Cam ever resort to wearing anything so common.

This was the nature of their relationship. Cam was eternally bitchy, and Dev was perpetually spooky. The dynamic was weird, but the friendship worked for them.

“Come on,” Dev said, pulling Cam’s attention to the task at hand. “Do this with me.”

“What? Bitch, no.”

“Why not? What the hell have you got to lose?”

“Just, you know, for some crazy-ass reason you manage to pull off some kind of beast wrangling, I don’t want to be dragged into the depths of the pit by some shrieking harpy demon. Especially in this outfit. I’m not ready to go to hell looking like this.”

“That’s not a thing, Cam.” Dev shook his head at Cam with a ‘god, you don’t know anything!’ kind of look.

“How the hell would you know?”

“I know. Now get down here.”

“Ugh, all right fine. It’s not like any of this has ever worked before.” Cam slid off the bed and sat opposite Dev on the floor, cross-legged. The comment bit at Dev. It hurt, but Cam’s flippancy wasn’t trying to put him and his interests down. Cam pointed to the newest acquisition, “What exactly is this thing?”

“A summoning board.”

“Yeah, you’ve said that. What is it, though? Like, what’s it supposed to do?” Cam asked, “And what are all those squiggly things?” Cam pointed toward the script patterning the outside of the board, his finger getting far too close to the board for Dev’s comfort.

“Shh. It’s nothing.” Dev slapped his hand away. “It’s only there to make the board look all gothic and shit.”

“Mmmhmm. K. So…what am I supposed to do? Run around the thing three times and chant ‘Bloody Mary’?” Cam asked.

“Oh my god, you’re such an idiot. No, you moron. It’s for summoning your greatest desires,” Dev instructed.

“Really? So, like, a big monster boyfriend?” Cam winked, cupped his own crotch, gave the bulge a couple of squeezes, and tossed Dev an over-dramatic come-hither look.

“I just…I can’t with you right now. Is that all you think about?”

“Nope. Bastard better be good-looking too. And rich. It takes money to keep me looking this good.” Cam ran his hands over his designer-clad torso and overpriced jeans.

“I swear to god, I don’t know why I bother with you.”

“Because you love me.”

“Sadly, yes. I do. Why? I have no idea.” Dev got up and rummaged around his room.

“Okay, so what the hell are you doing now?”

“We need things.”

“This is getting complicated.”

“Shush.”

Dev rushed around his room, gathering the trinkets they needed to do their first summons. And as fast as a desperate person would sell their soul to the devil, he returned to where Cam sat, mimicking his crossed-leg sitting position with the board between them. He handed Cam a marker and three post-it notes.

“And…?”

“Write down three wishes.”

“Damn, are we summoning a genie?”

“It’s called a Djinn, and no, we are not…at least, I don’t think. Why do you make everything a challenge? Write something down.” Dev prodded Cam with the end of his marker.

“Good lord, all right. Fine.”

Cam got busy scratching stuff down. He had his first wish written in a flat second, the other two he had to think on.

Dev on the other hand had already planned exactly what he was going to wish for. He’d come up with this plan the first time he spied the board in Magix & Mystix. He had dreamed of these particular desires for years. All his hopes lay on this last purchase.

This was it.

The last straw.

The last time any of this hocus pocus would be attempted.

Dev had promised himself if this didn’t work, he would give all of it up, for good. He was worn out from Cam’s remarks. The steady stream of one-liners and quick-witted comments were berating and made him feel hollow and silly. It was playful teasing on Cam’s part, but the jabs still hurt. His best friend thought his deepest held beliefs were nothing but nonsense and phooey.

Dev believed in magic. He would have staked his soul on a bargain with the devil.

Not having had any experiences with the supernatural had shattered Dev. The desperation every time he watched a movie or TV show where paranormal beings existed left a tennis-ball-sized lump in his throat. Why hadn’t he seen any? The sense of abandonment weighed heavily as if a hole of emptiness filled his chest cavity.

Yeah, okay, so TV wasn’t real. Still.

Dev spent many a sleepless night searching for some hint within the myriad of books he owned. Some trivial sign the Shadow Realm was waiting for him. There were so many others who had already travelled through the veil! All you had to do was go online. There were endless chat rooms and blogs of those who had seen ghosts, been visited by the fae, and seen horrifying encounters of those possessed by demons.

Dev believed. Wholeheartedly.

He believed in magic to the marrow of his bones.

So, this was it. And with all the heart-wrenching, utter loneliness and consuming desire for the Shadow Realm to be real, he wrote down his three wishes:

I want to have a supernatural power.

I want to see the Shadow Realm and be part of it.

I want my friends and family to respect me for my knowledge of the occult.

Dev folded the tiny notes in half. He didn’t want Cam to see them because then they wouldn’t come true. He tossed them into the copper cauldron he had placed in the center of the board. The instructions on the back of the box were specific. All wishes were to be written on paper, personalized with blood, and placed into the inner ring. Finally, the paper had to be burnt in order to release the energy created while making the desire tangible.

Cam gave Dev his pieces of paper.

“No! Not like that, geez.” Dev tossed them back at Cam.

Cam threw his hands up in the air. “What the hell?”

“Fold them in half like I did and put them in the copper bowl.”

“Fine.” Cam did as instructed. “There, happy?”

“Not quite. Give me your hand.”

“Why?”

“For the love of…” Dev grabbed Cam’s hand and deftly managed to stab a finger with a thumbtack.

“What the ever-loving fuck, dude?” Cam ripped his hand away and grabbed his finger. A small pinprick of blood welled up to the skin’s surface. He brought the finger up to his mouth.

“Don’t you dare!” Dev pointed at Cam.

Cam stopped and glared at Dev with a ‘well what?’ kind of look.

“Squeeze your finger so the blood drips onto your papers, but get it in the bowl, don’t get blood on my floor.” Dev pricked his own finger and held his digit over the bowl.

Three drops of blood fell into the copper cauldron. Followed thereafter by three of Cam’s.

Dev lit a match and pitched the flaming splinter into the bowl, pushing the post-it notes around so they caught fire.

“Go open the window,” Dev instructed Cam.

“Your mother will kill you if you burn the house down.” Cam got up, went over to the window, and slid the pane open. A gust of air blew into the room, ruffling loose papers on Dev’s desk.

“Okay, now come read this with me.” Dev gestured for Cam to sit beside him.

“I swear if anything happens…” Cam warned while he rearranged himself next to Dev, inspecting his finger and sucking at the miniscule wound.

“It will. I know it will.”

“You always say that.” Cam rolled his eyes and sighed with exasperation.

“Come on, read this.”

“Ugh, fine.”

And together, they read the incantation off of the instruction sheet that came with the board.

“With passion of heart, I seek to find, those Desires I want. Wishes to be mine.”

“That’s it?” Cam’s head tilted to one side in disbelief.

“That’s it.” Dev shrugged.

They waited for a few heartbeats. Loud ones that thudded against the inside of Dev’s chest.

“Okay, I’m bored now. And my finger hurts. You owe me a macchiato.” Cam grabbed his designer boots and slid them on. “You coming?”

Dev gazed into the cauldron as the last of the papers charred and blackened and tiny wisps of smoke curled up toward him and dissipated.

Nothing had happened.

His heart ached. His shoulders slumped, and he hung his head.

“Come on,” Dev flinched as Cam threw an arm around his shoulder and squeezed him in a one armed bro hug. “I’ll buy.”

“Yeah, all right.”

But, Dev couldn’t give up hope. Maybe you had to sleep on it. Maybe the moon cycle had to change over in order to power up the wishes.

Something had to happen.

As the two left the room, Dev eased the door closed using both hands on the doorknob while silently praying to any god or being who happened to be listening.

“Please hear me,” he whispered.

***

Inside the empty room, behind the closed door, the summoning board’s squiggly writing around the outside edges that was ‘only there to make the board look all gothic and shit’ shifted. As if the doodles and lines were dancing or marching.

The entire border rotated, widdershins, and the inner ring of the board spun in the opposite directions, changing the symbols.

The wind blew in through the open window and the curtain fluttered in the breeze.

---